


Auld Lang Syne

by Barb Cummings (Rahirah)



Series: The Barbverse [24]
Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst, Gen, Historical, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-21
Updated: 2009-11-21
Packaged: 2017-10-03 12:00:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rahirah/pseuds/Barb%20Cummings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ever wonder what happened to that baby Angel saved from Darla in 1900?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Auld Lang Syne

**Author's Note:**

> This story is set in the same universe as _A Raising in the Sun_, _Necessary Evils_, et. al. (See the [Barbverse Timeline](http://sleepingjaguars.com/buffy/viewpage.php?page=timeline) for specifics.) It contains spoilers for previous works in the series. The framing story is set in Los Angeles in the fall of 2002, and the flashbacks are set in Peking in the summer of 1900. Thanks to astridv for betaing, and to married_n_mich and Herself for encouragement.

You can take the vampire out of the ocean, but taking the ocean out of the vampire turns out to be a little bit more difficult. I woke up in a bed damp with seawater, still seeping out of my pores two days after they'd hauled me out of the Los Angeles Bay. My lips were caked with salt, and every cell in me was screaming for blood. Which was... great, actually, when you consider the alternative.

It was the taste of Wesley's blood, still lingering on my tongue, that convinced me that this was really my old room at the Hyperion, with my books on the shelves and my prints on the wall, and a summer-long layer of dust fuzzing every flat surface like mold. I trusted the blood. Not the faces of friends, not the voices of lovers, not the scent of home, because my hunger-mad brain had served their phantoms up to me all summer long. When I tore out the throats of my imaginary friends, the only thing that flooded my mouth was salt water. When Wesley pressed his bleeding wrist to my lips, I tasted life.

I straightened my shoulders (still hunched to the fit of my prison) and took a careful breath. My ribs ached. Coughing up a double lungful of water hurts like hell, even if you don't need the oxygen. The room smelled like brine and... cigarette smoke? A blade of sunlight sliced through the drapes, turning the smoke into a curtain of living silver. Across the darkened room, my savior - or one of them - sprawled in a chair, cigarette at half-mast. A sketch in blood and charcoal: wicked eyes, knowing smirk, one booted foot thrust within half an inch of the barrier of light. Spike.

And you wonder why I think the universe is out to get me?

"Where's Cordy?" I croaked.

"Downstairs." Spike blew a smoke ring. "Arguing with Wyndam-Pryce 'bout whether or not someone ought to open up another vein for you."

Part of me gratefully assigned a few more memories to the not-a-dream file. I raised one hand, curled my fingers. The deep cracks in the flesh were starting to heal. "And Connor?"

Spike's shoulders lifted and fell in a motion too languid to qualify as a shrug. "Haven't the foggiest. You're the one who went all 'Daddy spank!' and gave him the boot." He shifted in the chair, pupils flashing in the dim light, copper-green to blood-red. "And before you wear me out asking, Faith's asleep, the green poof's in Vegas, and the colored bloke and the bint with the taco fetish are having a celebratory fuck one floor up." The points of his canines glinted in his grin. "You want the lurid details?"

"Shut up, Spike." There was one scent present in my room only second-hand, one face absent from my shadowy half-memories of rescue. I couldn't say I was surprised. We'd parted angry, the last time we talked. We seem to do that a lot. But I wouldn't give Spike the satisfaction of asking about Buffy. "What the hell are you doing here?"

He scowled, exhaling a defensive cloud of smoke. "Same as Faith. Pryce and your cheerleader wanted someone on the team who could handle you if you woke up stroppy. But you're awake and no more a dickhead than usual, so I'll be off."

"Don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out." I heaved myself upright and swayed dizzily on the edge of the bed. This standing thing was more difficult than I remembered. Yeah. One foot in front of the other. I could handle it -

My feet decided they had better things to do after all, and I was flat on my back, staring up at the faint stain on the molding, where three coats of Pomegranate Mist couldn't entirely cover the old smoke-stains. The sword of light fell across my chest. Off with my head.

"Oh, bloody - !" Spike dove through the curtain of sunlight, moving too quickly to burn. He hoisted me up like a rag doll (so Drusilla must have carried him from the wreckage of the church where my blood had restored her) as my skin started to sizzle. I grit my teeth and held on as he manhandled me back onto the bed, humiliation burning hotter than the sunlight. I'd dumped Spike out of his wheelchair once, just for the kick of watching him drag himself across the marble floor on his elbows. God, he must be loving this. I was surprised he wasn't selling tickets.

Spike stood back, raking a hand through his bleached curls - he must really love Buffy, an ironic voice in the back of my head observed, because nothing else would induce him to lay off the hair gel. His face did a King of Masks through anger, fear, and malicious glee before settling on ticked off. "Sodding idiot," he snapped. "What, d'you think you can just get up and take a stroll? You were starved barmy for months, you great berk. Not that you couldn't stand to drop a pound or two, but this was bloody well overdoing it."

He stalked over to the kitchenette, doing that lithe, athletic panthery thing just to irritate me, I swear. He pulled a carafe of dark red liquid out of the refrigerator, and began rummaging through the cupboards for glasses. "Stay put, you tosser. I'll bring Justine's bucket if you need it, but if you ask me you'll be pissing dust for a week yet."

Justine. I'd smelled her on Wesley, and some ravenous, inhuman part of me had hoped Wesley had brought her along for me feed on. That part was still too close to the surface. I listened to the lick and gurgle of blood against the walls of the filling glass. "I have to find Connor. Keep an eye on him. He's - "

"The meanest little fuck in L.A.," Spike cut me off. He thrust the glass in my face. "He'll keep. Here. Drink."

The blood was human. I stared at it, startled into guilt. It couldn't be... no. Slightly stale, with the distinctive tang of anticoagulants. "Where'd this...?"

"Blood bank, where'd you think?" Spike shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans, his scowl returning for an encore. "Got tired of the dog-and-pony show downstairs and nicked it from the clinic last night. Go on. Got the ex-Watcher seal of approval."

I took a sip, thinking about bloodstains on a blanket made of sky. "Cordy called you?" I didn't care how long I'd been underwater, there was no way in hell Cordelia Chase would call Spike to help me.

The curl of Spike's lip confirmed that Cordy had not, in fact, lost her mind. "No, she called Buffy."

"And Buffy wouldn't come." That hurt, though I should have expected it. We hadn't spoken since January, when I told her about Connor...and about Connor's mother. I still didn't know whether to feel miserable or perversely pleased at how badly she'd taken the news, but nothing between Buffy and me is ever simple.

The muscles worked in Spike's jaw. "Couldn't," he said at last. "So I came instead."

And God, there was that look, the one that drove me crazy last year, half defiant, half pleading. _Tell me I did good._ I ignored it in favor of gulping down the rest of the blood, because really, what the hell could I say that I hadn't already said? Yeah, Spike, you did good, but it's for all the wrong reasons? A soulless vampire trying to reform for the love of a vampire slayer might be poetic, but Spike was a terrible poet. Buffy wouldn't listen, and Spike couldn't understand, and all I could do was sit in L. A. and wait for the distant sound of a train wreck down Sunnydale way.

I had train wrecks of my own to deal with. "I need to find out where Connor's holed up," I said, handing Spike the glass. He took it automatically, looked disgusted with himself, and set it on the counter. "I have to keep an eye on him. Make sure he's safe."

Spike folded his arms and propped a hip against the counter, the picture of lean smirky insolence. He'd filled out some since moving in with Buffy, and his t-shirt pulled across the chest and shoulders, an easy flex of muscle under black cotton. Darla gave me a taste for beautiful things, and God knows Spike is beautiful. Trouble is, Spike knows it too. He chuckled. "You are a piece of work, aren't you? Young Werther locked you in an icebox and chucked you in the Pacific to rot for eternity, and you're still picking out college funds."

"He's my son, Spike. Not that you'd get that."

His eyes narrowed, blue-hot, a laser focusing. "I get it. Anyone else would've killed you."

_Anyone else except me._ I knew what he wasn't saying. For a vampire, an afternoon's diversion with hot pokers doesn't really compare to a summer at the bottom of the bay, or a hundred years in hell. _So why can't you forgive me?_ And for a minute, I hated Spike. I mean, I always hate Spike, but for that minute I hated him more. Because he was here, and Connor wasn't. Because Connor had betrayed me, and Spike had helped to save me. Because in his twisted, soulless way, Spike loved me, and Connor didn't.

Some things you just can't forgive.

"So, Spike." I folded my arms behind my head. "Cordy calls. Your not so beloved grandsire's down the well! You come all the way from Sunnydale when Buffy couldn't make it, to help save me. You help Wes haul me out of the bay, you sit up with me all night, you bring me snacks." I waved at the carafe. "And you think that makes you a card-carrying good guy. Suppose I wanted something - or someone - a little fresher?"

A pair of suspicious lines scored his brow. "How d'you mean?"

"You know this bagged stuff's hardly better than butcher's leavings," I said. "Wesley was able to get me on my feet the other night because he gave me the good stuff, straight from the vein. That's what I need to heal. Live human blood. Would you go get me some?"

Spike stared at me. "You're joking, right?"

"Just answer the question, Spike. If you won't do it, why not?"

"Funny question for the one with the soul to ask, innit? Because Buffy wouldn't have it - and don't give me any bollocks about how she'd never know. I can't lie to her for shite. And it would disappoint Bit. And give Harris an excuse to stake me with his sodding crutches." He jabbed an accusing finger at me. "Because I know it's wrong, even if I can't feel it."

"Connor has a soul," I said softly. "I could feel it, even in his mother's womb. So could Darla. Carrying Connor's soul allowed her to love - really love. She died rather than give that love up. He's lost his way right now, but deep down inside, I know that my son is a good person. He doesn't just know what he's done is wrong, he feels it. He feels guilty, and angry, and afraid. I know, because I've felt that way too." I took a breath. "And you don't, Spike. All you know is that you have to follow a bunch of arbitrary rules if you want to keep fucking Buffy."

Spike's fangs came down and his eyes flared yellow, and between one moment and the next he was looming over the bed. His hand closed on my throat. Why the hell do we always do that? It never works. I met those demon eyes without flinching (I didn't have the energy to flinch) and smiled. "How's Buffy going to feel if you come home and tell her I'm a pile of dust, Spike?"

That was a gamble, because honestly, I don't know what Buffy feels for me any longer, and I'm not sure she does, either. I could feel Spike's muscles quivering with barely-leashed anger, and after a moment he shook off the fangs and ridges and stepped back. "You know bugger-all about it," he said. He turned away, fists clenching. "There's people I don't want to kill," he said, the words falling over themselves in their rush to escape. "Lots of 'em. Dozens, maybe. Getting to be more every day. Buffy's friends, Will's friends, sodding Harris's friends - " He whirled around, pacing the length of the bed and back. "Not like I couldn't kill 'em. Not like I'd feel specially bad if I did kill 'em. I think. But I don't want to. It's not the first thing I think of any longer. Talked to Buffy about it, but she doesn't understand why I - she thinks it's a good thing. She doesn't get why I'm - "

Terrified. It was in his eyes, his voice, the set of his spine.

"I've changed, Angel. Dunno where it'll stop, if it'll stop - First Evil, when we fought it last year, told me it could give me my soul back. Oh, it was lying, of course, couldn't do it, would've killed Buffy if it had, saved by the sodding bell, but I almost - " He stopped, his chest heaving. "I would've said yes. Would've _asked_ to be turned back into a sniveling little - so I don't let her down, you see?" He laughed, a little wildly. "I thought - I thought maybe you could..."

I let my head fall to one side, staring at the curtains, where the light was dimming from silver to gold as the sun set. Dozens of people Spike didn't feel like killing...not right this minute, anyway. And the sick, sad joke of it was, he really thought those dozen people meant something, stacked up against a century of murder and destruction he didn't feel the least bit sorry for. The last glimmer of sunlight winked out. "No. I can't."

Spike's mouth twitched, then hardened. "Fuck you," he said, and slammed through the French doors leading to the balcony. With the thump of boots on concrete and the rustle of wind through cloth, he was gone, melting into the dusk.

***

A century ago today, give or take a few years, I was hiding in a Peking alley with a baby in my arms. Night had sent the relentless swarms of black flies to their rest, but the stink of bodies rotting in the sweltering summer heat was enough to put anyone off breathing. Smoke and screams and the hollow crack of gunfire filled the night air. A few streets away, the sky above the diplomatic quarter was a lurid red.

The summer of 1900 was a vampire's paradise. Tens of thousands lay dead all across Northern China, foreigners and Chinese converts alike, slaughtered by their fellow men in numbers too vast for any vampire to conceive, in ways inventive enough to disguise our worst excesses. Before the summer's end, thousands more would die in the sack of Tientsin and Peking by the allied expeditionary forces. We could go anywhere, kill anyone, without fear of reprisal - and I, soul-sick and miserable, was missing the whole damned thing.

In the cobbled street, a rag-tag patrol of the Righteous Harmony Society trotted past, the bloody fangs of their white and crimson banners snapping at the breeze. A sickly, translucent green figure halted at the mouth of the alley, glowing in the darkness - not all the Boxers were alive, or human, and they could smell foreign blood, however long-dead. I vamped out and bared my own fangs. "You're not the only one here immune to bullets," I snarled.

The spirit-soldier hesitated, brandished its sword, and misted after its living comrades. I slumped back against the bricks, shivering and clutching my burden. Alone, I could easily slip through the Boxer lines and escape the city. But I wasn't alone. And where would I go? What would I do? What place was there in the world for a vampire cursed with a soul? Hunting Darla down in China had been my last hope of salvation, as she'd been my first, and she'd failed me. I looked down at the child I carried. No. I'd failed her.

The bundle in my arms squirmed, one tiny fist breaking free of its swaddling clothes. For this wailing, puking little scrap of humanity I'd broken with my sire forever, and now...now it was my main reason not to walk out to greet the sun come morning. I couldn't just leave it on someone's doorstep, not with the Boxers slaughtering any European they could lay hands on. I might as well have eaten it myself and stayed in Darla's good graces. And I didn't have any idea how to -

"Oi, Angelus!"

Overhead, a dark silhouette crouched gargoyle-fashion on the crenelated tiles of the rooftop. Spike dropped down into the alley, landing light and bouncy on the balls of his feet. He tossed his sandy queue over his shoulder and ran a thumb under his braces, tongue-tip caught in a sharp-toothed grin. "Dunno what kind of row you had with Her Nibs, mate, but she's pitching the fit to end all fits. Thought I'd better make myself scarce before she ran through the last of the servants and started in on me." He cocked his head, gazing curiously at the baby. "Wossat? Present for the missus? I warn you, it'll take you more than a sack lunch to soothe that savage breast. I recommend diamonds. Lots of 'em. And possibly a new house."

Don't think about the servants. I gave Spike the kind of stare that makes strong men break down and blubber for mercy. "Where's Drusilla?"

Spike's grin got a little wider. "Tucked up cozy in beddy-bye. Wore her out good and proper while you were out feeding." He spun around, feinting at the air. "Christ, I feel bloody fantastic! You should have seen it, Angelus - the way I took the Slayer down. I cornered her in the T'ang Tzu temple, see, and - "

"Later," I snapped. "Spike, what are you thinking? If Darla gets Drusilla upset, and Dru goes running off on her own - "

For a second I had him. The danger in Peking wasn't that anyone would notice a few more corpses among so many, but that our white faces would bring down a mob larger than we could handle - that we'd be killed not for the demons we were, but for the humans we had been.

And above all, Spike was devoted to Drusilla. Of course; that's why she turned him in the first place. To be her lover, her keeper, her companion, to lavish her with the constant attention Darla and I were too busy to give her. He stiffened with alarm - and then relaxed, his eyes narrowing. "Trying to get rid of me, are you? What's going on, Angelus? You're gone for months and Darla won't say why. And when you finally show up - dodgy's not half the word for the way you've been acting, is all I can say."

"So what are you going to do about it?" I breathed. I'd been living on rats for a year and he was still high on Slayer's blood, but the day I couldn't take Spike was the day I retired from the vampire business.

"That's up to you, innit?" Spike said, a challenging note in his voice. "You've got something up your sleeve, mate. And I want in."

He didn't know about the soul. Darla hadn't told him, and in some ways Spike reeked too highly of humanity himself to smell the stink of it on me. He stood there in the alley-mouth, slight and wiry, dried blood streaking his face like war-paint. Demanding his rightful place, his due. Spike had been a pain in my ass from the first night Drusilla brought him home, but I knew from the moment he looked me in the eye and thrust his hand into that sunbeam that Dru's new playmate had potential, potential that Dru was too addled to bring to fruition. Potential I could shape into something extraordinary. Spike would be my masterpiece.

Twenty years later I was abandoning that masterpiece unfinished - and maybe that was the attraction all along, that Spike would never be finished. He was the most stubborn of raw materials, forever throwing up unexpected snarls and rough edges, forever one last polish short of perfection. However apt a pupil he'd been, there were some things Spike never learned. He thought that being a vampire was some kind of glorious game, and he was never happier than when he was pushing me too far. Right now, I could use that.

"You want in, huh?" I drawled. "All right. I guess you've earned it. We have to get this baby to Sir Claude MacDonald."

"That Chink bint's Watcher?" Spike quirked an eyebrow. "Inside the British Legation? That's a tall order, all things considered."

"You're the one who wanted in," I said, striding out into the filthy street.

Spike loped after me, suspicious. "What's so important about that baby, then?" he asked. "This some kind of spell? Or a prophecy? Never do us any good, prophecies. Best stop mucking about with 'em, if you ask me."

"Did I ask you?" I didn't want to run into any more Boxer patrols if I could help it. I leaped for the rooftop and Spike followed, and together we slipped and scrambled across the tiled peaks and valleys of the Tartar City, shadows in the burning night.

Sooner or later, I was sure, the barricade around the Legation Quarter would fall, and the Europeans cowering inside would die the same deaths as the missionaries caught outside the walls. But that wasn't my responsibility. Right here and right now, the British Legation was still defended, by arms and Sir Claude's magic, and I could leave the baby there with a clean conscience - the only thing about my conscience that would ever be clean.

Fires burned in the distance as we dropped to street-level again and worked our way along the grey bulk of the Tartar Wall. We ghosted past the burnt-out ruins of the Italian Legate. Corpses clogged the streets. Spike took it all in with glittering eyes and an ear-to-ear grin. It struck me hard that his swagger wasn't a pose any longer. Spike had come into his own, become the monster that I, soul-cursed, could only pretend to be. And I knew that before this night was out, I'd have to kill him.

TBC...


End file.
